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November with the first 20,000 of the AIF, the Australian Imperial Force - a volunteer force,
for conscription would never be enforced throughout the war. Among these enthusiasts eager
for a punch-up and an overseas trip were four battalions of men from Victoria, and a company
from Footscray.
E Company, 120 men, had enlisted in Footscray at the outbreak of war. Its colours were tan
and red - 'mud and blood'. They were given a riotous and rousing send-off at the Drill Hall on 3
September. Their Captain assured the Council: 'If anyone can see this job through, it's the
Footscray lads!'. After cheering and booing through this and other speeches, the lads consumed
all the eats and drink on hand with such gusto that some worthies complained later of 'a drunken
orgy'. A soldier said: "I feel as though I could fight the fucking world'.
Tradesmen, labourers and country boys, they marched with thousands like them through
Melbourne and embarked for Albany and the war, proudly wearing their loose-fitting, woollen,
khaki uniforms and their felt hats, with wide brims turned up on the left and sporting the rising
sun badge of the AIF, its rays made up of bayonets and swords.
In Footscray, those left behind settled down with their newspapers to read about the censored,
propagandist progress of the war. Accounts of German atrocities soon inflamed citizens' feelings
of hostility towards anyone with a German name. Children so named were jeered at and called
Herman; adults were labelled Hun and avoided or abused; their businesses were boycotted or
stoned. But there was not much to read about Australians in action until April 1915. Even then it
was only the casualty lists in newspapers and letters from the front received in June and July that
told some of the story of Gallipoli. Oddly apt
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was the showing across America then of DW Griffiths' filmed epic, The Birth of a Nation, as the
blooding of another nation happened half a world away.
The men of E Company were among the first to land on the beaches of Gallipoli on 25 April
and among the first to die. Of their number only 30 were unwounded or alive at the end of the
day. In their letters they wrote: 'The bullets were dropping in the water just like rain'... 'There
were three in our boat shot'... 'Fellows were toppling over in all directions'... 'By jove, it was a
terrible battle'... 'It was simply hell on earth.' Sgt McKechnie, in hospital with 12 bullet wounds,
wrote: 'Nearly all our company was wiped out after six or seven hours fighting on that
memorable Sunday morning, only one officer and a few men being left standing. It was said the
famous Light Brigade rode to the gates of hell, but we went one better, and sailed into hell itself,
and stopped there, refusing to retire.'
But retire they did from that pernicious peninsula, after eight months of appalling conditions,
casualties and losses, added to by fever and disease and with nothing achieved.
In the midst of all this mayhem overseas, George Honeycombe married Bertha Madden.
George, Tom's eldest son, a clerk, aged 33, was living at 328 Queens Parade, North Fitzroy -
presumably with his mother, Catherine Honeycombe. Her other son and her daughter had
married already, and rather well socially, with Hedingtons, Permewans and Robertsons
attending the nuptials. George's bride was the 26-year-old daughter of another clerk, Augustus
Madden, of Charlotte Street in genteel Richmond.
It seems that George knew her father through work and then met and wooed the daughter. Her
'Rank or Profession" is described in the marriage certificate as 'Home Duties', and there was
probably something sedate and non-sensual about their courtship as well as their marriage, for
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